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Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

This privacy policy tells you all you need to know about how we, The Audio Group Limited (“The Audio Group”), collect, use and protect any information that you provide us with when using this website, including cookies, information your browser stores each time you visit a website.Here at The Audio Group we know that privacy is really important when shopping online, so rest assured that whenever we ask you for any personal information, it’s stored safely. Our intention is to make your shopping experience more personal.By shopping with us online you are accepting the terms set out in this privacy policy and The Audio Group Terms and Conditions. If you are a young The Audio Group customer under the age of 16, you must get your parent’s or guardian’s consent before giving us any personal information.We may change this policy from time to time by updating this page, please check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes. This policy is effective from July 2013 and should be read in accordance with the laws of England and Wales.

DATA COLLECTION AND STORAGE

We may collect personal and non-personally identifiable information about you when you register with The Audio Group or place an order for The Audio Group products (such as your age, location and the products you have previously ordered).

Any personal information we collect may be stored and processed in the UK, US or any other country in which our service providers are located. Information is stored safely and we will never share the information with any other companies.

WHY WE COLLECT DATA

We’ll use any information which you provide through this website for making your shopping experience that bit better, with emails tailored to the products you like stockists you live near to (only if you’ve asked to receive these, of course). After all, we want you to have the same personalised shopping experience online as you would in one of our stockists. For that reason it’s important you remember to update any changes in any of your details.

If you want to stop receiving our emails, you can also opt out at any time on the “My Account” page.

Alternatively, please contact our Customer Service team to make any amends on+44 (0)1270 842 877 (our lines are open from 8.30am to 7pm Monday to Friday (GMT)) or email us at sales@theaudiogroup.co.uk.

TO SEE INFORMATION WE STORE ABOUT YOU?

Do you want to see what kind of information we store about you? If you would like a copy of this information please write to us on the address set out below. It will cost a small fee and we’ll get the information to you as soon as possible.

The Audio Group Ltd
1b Cobbs Lane,
Hough, Cheshire
CW2 5JN

SHARING INFORMATION WITH THIRD PARTIES

Like any other online store, we might share information about you with other companies which help us to sell, including credit/debit card validation and authorisation, web hosting, data analysis, order fulfilment and mailings.

We’ll only give third parties the information they need to perform their functions and they will not use the information for any other purpose and acting within current legal guidelines.

Some of these companies are located outside of the European Economic Area (EEA), including the US, where the same levels of protection are not required, but we always stipulate that third parties follow the same procedures that we follow in relation to you personal information.

COOKIES

What are cookies?

Cookies are tiny text files stored on your computer when you visit certain web pages, used to keep track of what you have in your basket, and to remember when you return to our site.
Cookies help us to do things like resolve errors and to show you products you might like when browsing online. They don’t harm your computer and they don’t store anything really personal like bank details or your home address.

To order products, you need to have cookies enabled in your browser.

We’re giving you this information as part of our initiative to comply with recent legislation, and to make sure we’re honest and clear about your privacy when using out website. We know you’d expect nothing less from us, and please be assured that we’re working on a number of other privacy and cookie-related improvements to the website.

This privacy policy (this “Privacy Policy”) applies to your use of the www.theaudiogroup.co.uk Web site (the “Web site”), which is owned and operated by The Audio Group Limited (“The Audio Group Limited”, “us”, “our” or “we”).

Your privacy and security are important to us. Please read this Privacy Policy carefully to understand how we will use and protect the personal information you provide us. We will not share your personal information with anyone except as described in this Privacy Policy. We do reserve the right to make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time, so please check back periodically.

THE DATA CONTROLLER

We are obliged by law to inform you of the organisation(s) legally responsible for collecting, processing and storing your personal information, known as the Data Controller(s). When you provide personal information to us, the data controller is The Audio Group Limited, whose registered office is:

When you order goods from our Web site www.theaudiogroup.co.uk, certain personal information including Card Holder Data (“CHD”) such as credit or debit card details and billing address details is processed and stored by our online payment system provider, Paypal only process and store personal information relating to orders you place at www.theaudiogroup.co.uk. They do not process or store information relating to your general correspondence with The Audio Group Limited.

WHY WE COLLECT PERSONAL INFORMATION

You are our valued customer, and we collect and store information about you so that we can best serve you. We collect information from you so that we are able to provide you with an efficient and helpful experience using our Web site, to enable you to purchase our products, to enable ourselves to fulfil those product orders, and to provide you with excellent and ongoing customer service at all times.

TYPES OF INFORMATION

We define three different types of information that we may collect from you.

Personal Information

“Personal Information” refers to information that tells us know who you are and which can be used to identify, contact or locate you. Examples of Personal Information include your first name together with your last name, your mailing address and/or email address, and your phone number.

Generally, we collect and store Personal Information when you use the Web site to create a user account, make product purchases, fill out surveys, correspond with us, choose to submit testimonials, or otherwise volunteer information about yourself. Specifically, we collect and store Personal Information to verify your identity when you are making purchases via the Web site and to store the details of your order.

Card Holder Data

“Card Holder Data” (“CHD”) refers to billing information that you provide in order to complete a transactional order with us on the Web site. Examples of CHD include your credit or debit card details and your associated billing address.

We do not store any CHD at any time. However, we do collect CHD when you make a purchase. When we collect CHD, it is done so over a secure, encrypted connection between our Web site and the device you are connecting to the Web site with. Having securely encrypted this data we then transfer it to our payment-processing provider, PayPal, again over a secure, encrypted connection. Once the data has been securely transferred to PayPal we no longer store or in any way handle the data. At no point is your CHD stored in a database or other file or data storage mechanism within our Web site or related IT systems, and at no point is CHD transferred to or from our Web site or related IT systems without first being securely encrypted.

Realex store CHD for each transaction that they process, but we have further access to this data if and only if such access is required by the investigation of suspected fraudulent transactions. PayPal do not store any of your Personal Information above and beyond what is necessary for the processing of your transaction.

Non-personal Information

“Non-personal Information” refers to information that does not by itself identify any specific individual. Examples of Non-personal Information we may collect include demographic information, statistical information about which web pages of ours are most often visited and which of our products are either receiving the most purchases or views. We may collect Non-personal Information through any of the methods noted above as well as automatically through use of industry standard technologies discussed further below.

WHEN WE COLLECT INFORMATION

We collect the following information when the following activities occur:

General Correspondence with The Audio Group Limited. We will collect and store any information you provide us with when you contact us with an enquiry or comment by email, via a Web site form, via phone or via written correspondence. Typically the information we will store will include your name, mailing and/or email address, and the contents of your enquiry. If you already have a user account on our Web site and you have provided your email address when you make your enquiry or comment, we will be able to identify you and associate your enquiry with your user account. This helps us to maintain a thorough correspondence history with each of our customers or potential customers, and to constantly improve our services.

Creating a User Account When you create a user account on the Web site we will collect and store Personal Information including your name, email address and the password for your user account. We will also store your ‘Opt-in’ or ‘Opt-out’ preference settings for being contact by us in the future with news or promotions.

Purchasing products on the Web site When you purchase products on the Web site (which requires you to create a user account or login to your existing account), we will store the order details including the delivery address, the products you have ordered and any offers or promotions you are taking advantage of. If the order is refunded or cancelled for any reason, we will also store details relevant to our processing the refund or cancellation. At no point do we store your Card Holder Data. If you make an enquiry, comment or complaint about a specific order or historical purchase, we will store the details of your enquiry alongside the relevant order record in your user account. This allows us to maintain a thorough history of our correspondence with you and better respond to your enquiry.

Browsing the Web site We may collect Non-personal information as you browse the Web site. This information may include referring URLs, your IP address, which browser you used to browse the Web site with, information regarding your domain server, the location of your server, the specific pages you viewed and the order you viewed them in during your visit. This information is strictly non-personal, and is not stored against your user record even if you are logged in. It is, thus, anonymous data.

HOW WE COLLECT INFORMATION

We collect information when you provide it (either over the phone, in written communication, by email, by completing web forms or simple using Web site functionality such as placing orders), but we may also use certain industry-standard technologies to automatically handle and collect non-personal data, including:

Cookies Cookies are small pieces of information stored by your browser on your computer’s hard drive. We use cookies to identify each visit or ‘session’ by a unique individual to our Web site. This allows us to improve you user experience (for example, by keeping logged in over a period time). This is the only use of cookies that we make, and they contain no personal information whatsoever. Moreover, they each have an expiry time period and are automatically deleted if there is no activity between your browser and the Web site for 20 minutes. You can set your browser to not accept cookies, but unfortunately if you do this you will not be able to create a user account, login or use the shopping facilities on the Web site.

Server Logs Each time you access the Web site our server will log your IP address. This information in non-personal, and is not recorded against your user account even if you are logged in.

HOW WE STORE INFORMATION

We store Personal Information in an industry-leading Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database that is hosted separately from the Web site. Information is transferred between the CRM system and the Web site over a secure, encrypted connection. All access to the CRM application by our staff is via a web browser over a secure, encrypted connection, and by a unique password and username combination only from specifically authorised computers. Unauthorised access to the CRM database or the web server is protected against by physical security means.

HOW WE SAFEGUARD YOUR INFORMATION

Card Holder Data

We do not store any Card Holder Data whatsoever, and only handle it by collecting it and passing it to PayPal for processing over a secure, encrypted connection when you make an order.

Personal Information

Please see the preceding section, and the subsequent sub-sections.

Data Security

We use industry-standard 128bit SSL encryption to protect the transmission of Personal Information and Card Holder data between our Web site and our payment processing provider PayPal. We firmly believe this offers an excellent level of protection for your data (and it certainly meets or exceeds that required by law and other relevant industry standards and best-practices). However, it is important for us to state that even encrypted communications sent over the Internet are possible, in theory, to intercept and decrypt – though the practical challenges are difficult to overstate. We do not encrypt our email correspondence with you (including automated emails our Web site may send to you), and these communications are therefore more vulnerable to interception. You hereby acknowledge that The Audio Group Limited is not responsible for any intercepted information sent via the internet, and you hereby release us from any and all claims arising out of or related to the use of intercepted information in any unauthorised manner.

HOW YOU CAN HELP BY PROTECTING YOURSELF

You are solely responsible for safeguarding and maintaining the secrecy of your User ID, passwords and/or any account information in your possession or control. Please be careful and responsible whenever you are online. Our Web site may contain links to third parties who may collect information directly from you. Each of the Web sites linked from the Web site have separate privacy policies and data collection practices, independent of The Audio Group Limited, and we have no responsibility or liability for these independent policies or actions and is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such Web sites nor do we make any warranties or representations about the contents, products or services offered on such Web sites or the security of any information you provide to them. In addition, it is important to keep us updated with your most current contact information. You may ask us in writing via mail or email to have the information on your account deleted, updated or corrected, subject to this Privacy Policy.

DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION

As a general rule, we do not and will not, at any time, share, provide access to, trade, sell or rent your Personal Information to other people, companies or organisations, except as otherwise stated in this Privacy Policy.

We may, however, disclose your Personal Information to related parties who assist us in the delivery of our services. Such related parties may only use your Personal Information to the extent permitted by us pursuant to this Privacy Policy. For example, we share your Delivery Address information for any specific order you place with our shipping partner—but only so that they can deliver your products to you. We may also disclose your Personal Information to relate parties who we wish assist us in the improvement of our services. For example, we might provide access to your Personal Information to a technology providing who is maintaining or adjusting our CRM database, or to a consultancy firm who is advising us.

We may also be required by law enforcement or judicial authorities to provide Personal Information to the appropriate government authorities. We fully cooperate with law enforcement agencies in identifying those who use our products or services for illegal activities. We reserve the right to report to law enforcement agencies any activities that we in good faith believe to be unlawful. Moreover, we may use or release account information and Personal Information when we believe that such release is reasonably necessary to enforce or apply our Terms and Conditions of Use or to protect the rights, property and safety of our users, others and ourselves.

We reserve the right to disclose Non-personal Information in any manner.

Finally, we may transfer your Personal Information to a successor in interest to The Audio Group Limited if The Audio Group Limited is acquired by or merged with another organisation. In such event, The Audio Group Limited will use reasonable efforts to notify you(either by posting notice on the Web site or by email to you at the last known email address) before information about you is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy, provided however, in the event The Audio Group Limited fails to notify you, your Personal Information will still be transferred but subject to this Privacy Policy.

YOUR ACCESS TO YOUR OWN PERSONAL INFORMATION

Upon written request, we will use reasonable efforts to allow you to update or correct Personal Information previously submitted but only to the extent such activities will not compromise privacy or security interests. Also, upon a user’s written request, we will functionally delete the user and his or her Personal Information from the database(s) where such information is stored; however, it may be impossible to delete a user’s entry without some residual information being retained because of the nature in which backups and archives of data are maintained.

CHANGES TO THIS POLICY

This Privacy Policy is effective with respect to any Personal Information collected on or after the effective date of 1st August 2009. We reserve the right to modify or supplement this Privacy Policy at any time. If we make any changes, we will update the Web site and Privacy Policy to include such change and notice thereof. Please review this Privacy Policy often to review any changes that may affect your use of the Web site. Your continued use of the Web site once the revised Privacy Policy has been posted on the Web site affirms your agreement to such changes.